Skip navigation
Tate Logo
Shop
Become a Member

Main menu

  • Art and artists
    • Our collection
      Artists
      Artworks
      Art by theme
      Explore
      Videos
      Podcasts
      Short articles
      In depth
      Art Terms
      Tate Research
      Student resources
      Make art
      Create like an artist
      Kids art activities
      Tate Draw game
  • What's on
  • Plan your visit

Main menu additional

  • Shop
  • Become a Member
Expand
  • Art and Artists
  • Artworks
  • A Line Made by Walking

Richard Long CBE

A Line Made by Walking

1967

© Richard Long

License this image

Not on display

Artist
Richard Long CBE born 1945
Medium
Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper with graphite on board
Dimensions
Image: 825 × 1125 mm
frame: 840 × 1139 × 41 mm
Collection
ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
Acquisition
ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Reference
AR00142

Summary

This photograph shows a straight line of trampled grass receding towards tall bushes or trees at the far side of what appears to be a field. Below the photograph, on the off-white paper mount, are the words ‘A LINE MADE BY WALKING’ (handwritten in red pencil) and, below this, ‘ENGLAND 1967’ (handwritten in graphite pencil).

The work documents an action by Richard Long – the creation of a transient line in nature made by repeatedly walking back and forth in a grassy field – which he then photographed from an angle at which the sunlight made the line particularly visible. The artist made this work while still a student at St Martin’s School of Art, London, where his contemporaries included the artists Gilbert & George, Barry Flanagan and Hamish Fulton. Long has described how, in June 1967, he took a train from London’s Waterloo station heading southeast, disembarked after about twenty miles and found the featureless field that was to become the site of A Line Made by Walking. Working outside the walls of the gallery in the expanded space of the real world, he created the first of his many works made by walking.

Long has commented about this work:

Nature has always been recorded by artists, from prehistoric cave paintings to twentieth-century landscape photography. I too wanted to make nature the subject of my work, but in new ways. I started working outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this evolved into the idea of making a sculpture by walking … My first work made by walking, in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going ‘nowhere’. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art.
(Tufnell 2007, p.39.)

For a seemingly simple and prosaic action to be understood as art was a breakthrough for Long’s artistic career and also anticipated the practice of performance art that was to become widespread during the 1970s. Although no human figure appears in Long’s photograph, A Line Made By Walking presents a trace of corporeal presence and bodily action.

Long has always identified himself as a sculptor, and A Line Made By Walking has been associated by some writers with minimalist sculpture due to its pared down aesthetic (see Roelstraete 2010, p.46). However, unlike conventional minimalist sculpture, A Line Made by Walking was impermanent (the trodden grass would have returned to its natural state within a matter of days). This transience reflects an anti-materialist mode of practice that chimed with what conceptual artists such as Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt and Douglas Huebler were doing in America at the same time. By producing dematerialised art, that had little or no physical form or was ephemeral, the aim was to critique the materialist values of consumer society, and even circumvent the art market. Of course, for many of these artists the work’s materiality was quickly retrieved by photography, and it was the document or record of the work that became the art ‘object’ to be displayed, bought and sold.

Long’s use of the natural environment in A Line Made by Walking has meant that it has also been readily associated with land art, a practice which emerged in the late 1960s in both Europe and America and integrated aspects of minimalism and conceptualism with a direct engagement in the landscape. However, in comparison to the monumental permanent works of the North American land artists (for example Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty 1970 or Michael Heizer’s Double Negative 1969–70), which took significant amounts of mechanised labour to create, Long’s intervention in the landscape was transient and humble. This disparity has meant that Long has been somewhat uneasy about being classified as a ‘land artist’ (see Tufnell 2007, pp.9–10).

Further reading
Ben Tufnell (ed.), Richard Long: Selected Statements & Interviews, London 2007, p.39.
Clarrie Wallis, Richard Long: Heaven and Earth, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2009, p.43–6, p.172, reproduced p.44.
Dieter Roelstraete, Richard Long: A Line Made by Walking, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London 2010.

Ruth Burgon
January 2012

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

Read more

Conceptual photography Land art

Explore

  • abstraction(8,615)
    • non-representational(6,161)
      • geometric(3,072)
  • emotions, concepts and ideas(16,416)
    • formal qualities(12,454)
      • photographic(4,673)
  • people(22,072)
    • actions: postures and motions(9,111)
      • walking(607)

You might like

Left Right
  • Richard Long CBE Dartmoor Walks

    1972
  • Richard Long CBE Turf Circle

    1966
    On display at Tate Britain part of Modern and Contemporary British Art
  • Richard Long CBE A Line Made by Walking

    1967
  • Richard Long CBE Turf Sculpture

    1967
  • Richard Long CBE England 1968

    1968
    On display at Tate Britain part of Modern and Contemporary British Art
  • Richard Long CBE A Hundred Mile Walk

    1971–2
  • Richard Long CBE Untitled

    1967
  • Richard Long CBE Cerne Abbas Walk

    1975
  • Richard Long CBE A Line in Bolivia - Kicked Stones (2 Versions)

    1981
  • Richard Long CBE Silence Circle Big Bend Texas

    1990
  • Richard Long CBE Circle in Africa

    1978
  • Richard Long CBE A Line in the Himalayas

    1975, printed 2004
  • Richard Long CBE Sahara Circle

    1988
  • Keith Arnatt Walking the Dog

    1976–9
    View by appointment
  • Keith Arnatt Walking the Dog

    1976–9
    View by appointment

In the shop

Browse the shop
Close

Join in

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Sign up to emails

Sign up to emails

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Tate’s privacy policy

About

  • About us
  • Our collection
  • Terms and copyright
  • Governance
  • Picture library
  • ARTIST ROOMS
  • Tate Kids

Support

  • Tate Collective
  • Members
  • Patrons
  • Donate
  • Corporate
  • My account
  • Press
  • Jobs
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Contact